His warning comes as MEPs and the European Commission push ahead with plans for a regulation requiring banks to charge customers the same for cross-border euro transfers as domestic ones.

The Belgian finance minister described it as “abnormal” to pay “such a high amount for cross-border payments”.

He also wants reforms to extend to the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the systems banks use to transfer huge sums. For example, he envisages stock and bond market transactions getting a boost from the reforms.

Reynders said he has asked the European Central Bank to prepare a report on reforms of the financial settlements system for the Laeken summit on 14 December.

The banking industry has indicated that it will take them five years to adapt to new systems, but Reynders believes they can do this more quickly: “I am sure that it must be possible to come to a shorter term and with the introduction of the euro I am sure that it will be necessary to do that,” he said. “We need to have a system of settlement and payment on a European level because we have a European currency,” he added.

Meanwhile Reynders played down mounting criticism that finance ministers have gone too far in their goading of ECB President Wim Duisenberg to slash interest rates after 11 September. He said the ECB shared the view of the Euro12 that there was more room for manoeuvre on interest rates than public spending, which is kept in check by the EU’s stability and growth pact.

Speaking earlier at an e-commerce conference hosted by CFO Europe, a sister publication of European Voice, Reynders stressed that dialogue between the two institutions had been much improved “despite the difficulties of a Belgian presidency of the EU and a Netherlands presidency of the ECB”. On wider issues, he renewed Belgium’s support for an EU-wide tax, saying it would be a “symbol of a real political authority in Europe”, adding: “As we transfer from a virtual currency to a real one, so we must transfer from a virtual Europe to a real one.”